Sunday, January 14, 2007

Here is John Mindry. He is a law-abiding citizen. He pays his taxes, is nice to the portly gentleman who delivers the milk and looks after his environment well. He has been so since his childhood and it was of great consternation to him when certain decidedly bad things began to happen in his life. His father died after becoming embroiled in a brawl with inveterate gamblers. His mother was diagnosed with Nomad's Knee and promptly left the house and hasn't been seen since. He himself was struck down one fine afternoon with tonsilitis, diagnosed with peptic ulcer, given a large number of the wrong pills that made him severely diarrhoeic and had to take three full days off from work.

These sad happenings left John Mindry altogether unhappy about the deal he had made with his Creator. I did not subscribe to this deal, he confided to his Creator, assuming the Man Upstairs, as he called Him, was listening to him. I have been a good man, an honest citizen, he continued, and I have not received health, wealth or other benefits that such goodness entitles one to. I wish, now, to complain about this plan of Yours and change my plan to one among some of the other, more interesting offers. Thank you, he concluded.

When, after a while, there was forthcoming no response from his Creator, John Mindry grew angry, very angry. He would, he decided, not take His name again. The name of his Creator, that is, not his own name. Also, in order to teach his Creator a lesson, John Mindry decided to become a pig. No, not in the sense of adopting a Bohemian lifestyle, since he was rather a fan of the whole tidiness and neatness deal.

John Mindry, struck down by tonsilitis, misdiagnosed and given pills with a laxative attitude and forsaken by his Creator, had decided to become an actual pig. An animal with a strongly porcine disposition.

In order to become a pig, he began studying the field of genetics with a fanatical zeal and zest. He mastered in under eight months what under-graduate and graduate students studied in over four years. By the end of the ninth month, Mindry was capable of successfully performing complicated genetic experiments. He began simply enough. He bent a cow's knee, bit a crow's feathers, pecked a parrot right in the face and inserted a stick into a donkey. He then moved on to more complex trials. To further proceed towards his goal of turning into a pig, he decided to build a mutation machine. This machine would envelop the subject in an embrace of X-rays, ultraviolet rays and a host of other illicit radiations and alter their genetic structure according to a programmed set of instructions and stored genetic data.

Mindry first tested his machine on rats, mice, bandicoots and other rodents. The results were splendid:- the rats turned into mice, the mice into rabbits, the rabbits into carrots and the carrots into green, leafy vegetables. For a final, pre-usage-on-self test, which his friends in the software industry analogously called 'beta testing,' he decided to find human subjects. His efforts to procure a willing, human subject were frustrated by failure. He would go out into the streets and ask people, "Will you be my beta tester?" People would ask, "What?" Upon which, John Mindry would repeat, "Will you be my beta tester?" To which they would respond again, "What?"

Feeling extremely frustrated at the human race's stupidity, Mindry would weep piteously and ask "Will you be my beta tester???" People would still not give up their stubborn stance, "What?" The occasional, slightly bright passerby would ask, "For what?" To this, Mindry would give no answer. His experiment was a sacred secret and his way of teaching his Creator a lesson. Telling too many people about it would leak it all the way up to Him. As a result, he told no one and got no testers. He got, instead, a lot of rude responses and hand gestures and felt sad. "There is a zeal in me and a zeal in you. The fire that burns is pure and true," he told them. He was fond of this particular poem by a poet named G W Jale. Not many other than Mindry and Jale's own family had heard of G W Jale. And even they often kept forgetting.

It was then that John Mindry decided to be the subject of his own genetic mutation machine to turn men into pigs. On a fine morning, he sat in the seating area of his machine and strapped himself in. He turned it on by means of a remote control. The machine shuddered to life and made that sound all machines make when they are operative. After a while, it turned off. John Mindry opened his eyes(which he had shut when the machine had turned on) and looked down. Human hands still.

The experiment had not been successful. He would have to experiment more. He did. Tweaking this, altering that.

It was during this period of unfortunate experimentation that John Mindry developed an extremely ductile penis.